


your guts spill into your lap and you're like "well, shit"

by butthulu



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood and Gore, Character Turned Into Vampire, Human/Vampire Relationship, Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest, don't worry the major character death is only temporary hes a vampire now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:21:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24568405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butthulu/pseuds/butthulu
Summary: Dave got bit by more than just mosquitoes at summer camp.
Relationships: Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider/Dave Strider
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	1. my kid just died. what now?

**Author's Note:**

> its incest dont like dont read

When Dave steps off the bus from summer camp flushed and sweaty in a bad way, Bro knows something is up. The kid can barely stay on his feet, he looks like he's going to drop at any moment, and he's not wearing his shades, so Bro can see the way his eyes won't focus, hazy and half-lidded. He stumbles towards Bro and Bro catches him- of fucking course- and carries him back to his car, propping him up in the front seat with his pillow. He's feverish. Before Bro can get back and maybe yell at the counselors for not taking care of his kid or at least calling beforehand to let Bro know he was sick, the bus takes off, leaving him eating its dust and absolutely livid. 

His knuckles don't stop being white on the steering wheel until halfway home. He nearly crashes several times because he keeps glancing over at Dave, who seems to be sleeping, but not restfully. He keeps shifting, his hands clenching and unclenching and his whole body tight, wound like a coil ready to spring. (Or break. Bro tries not to think about that.)

When they get home, Bro moves him from the car to Dave's bed with more care than he's ever handled anything in his fucking life. Getting him tucked in by itself is more nervewracking than it has any right to be. He checks Dave's temperature. It's gotten hotter, as far as he can tell; no thermometer back at the bus stop, so no point of comparison. It  _ feels _ hotter, though. Bro's pretty sure a hundred and three is  _ bad _ , like,  _ real _ bad, but he doesn't  _ know _ . A quick online search shows that it's only dangerous if it rises, or lasts more than a couple days.

It rises. In the middle of the night. Bro wakes up to Dave barely breathing. 

If he cries, nobody's around to see it, and Dave is delirious, so he can't prove shit. He's packing his shit to go to the hospital when Dave starts screaming. Bro doesn't know what to fucking  _ do _ , he's never dealt with a fever  _ this _ bad before, but there's a hospital real close by, so Bro tries his best to wrestle Dave into the car. Dave goes limp and silent halfway through, and for a second Bro thinks he really has stopped breathing, but when Bro puts a hand to his chest- god, he's so small, Bro's hand is like three quarters the span of his ribcage- his heart is still beating and it still rises and falls. He's still got time.

Dave is pronounced dead three hours later. 

Bro walks back to his car in a daze. He has to... to call the funeral home, and.....

He breaks down in his car, head resting on the steering wheel. He's not usually one to cry, and now he's cried twice in one morning. The thought sticks with him as he sobs, the weight of his failure crashing down on his shoulders. He fucking failed. He failed Dave, and now Dave's  _ gone. _ The kid was the one thing that made his life fucking  _ worth _ anything- his business, his hobbies, they don't mean shit if he doesn't have anyone to  _ share _ them with, and Dave is the only one he's been close to ever since their parents ditched them. 

Fuck, he's never gonna play games with him again. Never gonna engage in stupid slapfights over stupid shit. Never gonna make him laugh so hard he snorts applejuice out his nose. It feels like something tangible has been ripped out of Bro's chest, though his heart still beats. 

He runs out of tears, eventually. The drive home passes in a blur. Bro's not sure how he didn't drive straight into a lamp post. Probably muscle memory.

He has to call the funeral home. There's gotta be arrangements for Dave's...

Bro can't cry. He's all out of water. But he does sit in his car for a very, very long time. He sits there, shoulders slumped, and tries to stuff the- the  _ everything _ , into a little box so he can  _ focus _ and do what needs to be done. He's good at that, he's always been good at it, but now.... Now it's like the one skill he's been able to use since he was a kid is just gone. Or severely diminished. He closes his eyes and takes deep breaths and considers screaming. But that would likely make someone call the police. If they haven't already. 

Right. Funeral home. Body. Needs to get taken care of.

His limbs are heavy as he puppets his body up the stairs and into the apartment. He  _ deeply _ wishes to lay down and let himself fall apart, but he did enough of that in the car. He needs to focus on the job in front of him. Little steps. Pick up the phone. Dial the number.

Making arrangements is easier than he thought it would be. It's just talking to someone on the phone. He blocks out the parts where they offer condolences, making awkward silence where a reply should be so he doesn't have to think about this more than he needs to. He picks cremation as the method of....

Fuck.

After the call he really does lay down. And he stays that way for hours, until he falls asleep.


	2. no organs body cavity empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: GORE 
> 
> if you still wanna read, skip from "And why are they covering his face?" to "The space he's in is very well lit"

Dave wakes up to a bright light.

Something is covering his whole body, and he's _cold._ Or, well, sort of. The air around him is cold, and whatever he's laying on is cold, and he can feel those things, but he feels like it's a balmy seventy-five degrees. No goosebumps, even. No shivers. His return to consciousness is not abrupt, but it _is_ as if someone just turned on a light switch in his brain. He was asleep one moment, and now he's not. Now, he's awake.

Under something. His bedsheets? When did he get home? And why are they covering his face?

He sits up. The sheet falls away. And his guts fall out. 

When he turns his head, there's someone there. In a mask and gloves, with a scalpel in their hand.

"Is it weird that this doesn't hurt at all?" Is the first thing that comes out of Dave's mouth. The person screams and drops the scalpel, which Dave thinks is reasonable, since the person he was just vivisecting is sitting up and talking to him like he isn't vivisected and on, like, a _ton_ of painkillers. He must be on enough painkillers to sedate a fucking elephant, because holy shit, his _guts_ are in his _lap._ There's... like... intestines and shit. Maybe his stomach. Dave isn't really sure what they're all supposed to look like, not _exactly_ , but wow, there sure are a lot of them. How is he still alive? 

Dave tries his best to put them back in. He feels weirdly lucid, for someone drugged to high heaven. He can _feel_ his organs, that's weird. He's extremely tempted to play with them, but then he has the very bizarre image of his mom(whom he hasn't even _seen_ since he was like, five, goddamn, brain) scolding him not to play with his food, and he giggles.

Alright, that kinda hurts. But in the same way pulling a muscle a little hurts. It twinges. Dave is pretty sure his lungs are trying to fall out of place too, and that's why it hurts, and that would be _mega_ bad. (As if his stomach falling all over the place isn't bad enough.) He sorta half lays back down and tries to scoop all the viscera into the general right place. The guy who was operating on him just left flaps of skin in place- makes sense, Dave supposes- so Dave fumbles around on the tool table that he just _left_ there and sews himself back up. Things don't super _duper_ feel right after that, but Dave figures that either things will sort themselves out or he'll die.

Where the fuck is he, anyways?

Now that his internals aren't playing a very jiggly(and wet, ew, he's covered in blood and just... _slime_ ) role on the stage of life outside Dave's body as externals, he can take a look around properly. The space he's in is very well lit with stark fluorescents, and one of them is flickering down at the end, which is annoying, they should get that fixed, but Dave is thinking about that as he's looking at the rows of refrigerated compartments that he recognizes from TV dramas as the chambers that make up a morgue.

Holy fuck, he's in a morgue.

Holy fuck, did he _die?_

But he's up. And thinking. And walking- well, no, sitting, he's definitely sitting, and if he hadn't been he definitely would have sat back down right about now, because oh god he's definitely dead. Is _that_ why he couldn't really feel the whole... vivisection thing? All he could feel while sewing his stomach back up (which was annoying as hell, it was split into three parts and that was _such_ a bitch to sew together in the middle) was pinpricks of pressure and then the tugging of the thread. No pain. He can feel everything else, though. The metal is still cold, even though he's surely been laying on it for ages, which is another tick for the "dead" box. He can feel that. And he can feel the texture of the sheet still sort of half under him. Feels kinda nice, actually. Dave spends a minute wiping his hands and arms on it so he's not filthy.

So, if he's dead, or... he died and came back... Then is this the afterlife? 

Doesn't _smell_ like the afterlife. Smells like chemicals. And blood. Probably mostly from him.

Is he... _un_ dead? Actually really undead? That _would_ explain the "guts spilling out and then not dying" thing. Can't die twice, after all. How the hell did he die? The last thing he remembers is being pulled aside at summer camp.....

Oh, fuck, that counselor was _totally_ a vampire. They _bit_ him, and then fed him their grossnasty blood! Fucking _hell_. 

If he's in the morgue, then that means that he went to the hospital. Following that logic, someone had to _drive_ him to the hospital. The options are "an ambulance" or "Bro", and either way Bro knows he's dead, so that's. That's bad. Dave's chest hurts just thinking about that. He can't even imagine how he'd feel if Bro died, and even though Bro is too cool to _say_ he loves him Dave _knows_ he loves him, so Bro's probably really broken up right now. Dave needs to go home, _fast._

He doesn't feel too bad about stealing the scrubs from the closet down the hall. It's the middle of the night, nobody is around, and they're not going to miss one set of scrubs. Though... they _are_ super big on him, which isn't great for inconspicuity. He manages to make it out the front doors without being spotted, and, oh, hey, he knows this hospital. He can walk home. 

Still takes an hour. Luckily, this no-pain thing means Dave's feet don't even hurt by the time he gets home. He just feels kinda.... tired. And sluggish. Like he hasn't slept or eaten in a while, even though he _just_ woke up. He's _super_ thirsty, though. He didn't notice until now, but now that he's home and not thinking about how super undead he is, he doesn't have anything to focus on other than the steady, uncomfortable burn in the back of his throat. It's so _dry._ How did he not notice before? He's gotta get some water when he gets home.

The door to their apartment is unlocked. Dave is kind of alarmed, because Bro's usually really good about locking the door. He lets himself in. Bro's laid out on the futon, face down with his face turned to the side atop a pillow. The light is on. Dave turns it off, and sneaks into the kitchen to get his water. Maybe he can go back to bed and pretend this didn't....

Nah. That's not an option. Honestly, it would be weirder if he did that. Bro probably already called the funeral home or something, that's what you're supposed to do when someone you know dies, right? They're probably gonna report Dave as missing. Yikes, Dave didn't even think of that. He sips his water as he thinks about it.

He's still thirsty.

He drinks more water. He's still thirsty. It's like the water doesn't even register on his palate, his tongue is still so fucking _dry_ , like a desert decided to shit in his mouth with a big fat sandy turd, like he hasn't drank anything in _years._ When he licks his lips to try and wet them, it does nothing. His teeth _itch_ , too. Like he's teething. 

Dave's starting to get an idea of what kind of undead he is. As he stares down at Bro, whose pulse he can _hear_ from three feet away as if his ear was pressed to Bro's chest, he thinks he knows what's gonna slake his thirst, and Bro is full of it. Lots of it.

At least he's not a zombie.


End file.
